


the usual

by bluebeholder



Series: the accidental epic [45]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Tina Goldstein, Domestic Fluff, F/M, M/M, Period-Accurate Aspic, Potions Accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 20:51:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15804351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: Life isn't all heaviness and plot. Sometimes, nice things and small adventures just happen.Three vignettes for the couples of the Suitcase Family.





	the usual

**Author's Note:**

> The tags literally say it all. Enjoy!

“Has the gelatin soaked?” Jacob asks. _Almost time!_

Queenie carries over the bowl of cold water. “Yeah,” she says. “Are we boiling?”

Jacob steps back from the pot of chicken stock and Queenie pours the gelatin in carefully. _Don’t splash, it’s boiling…_ He stirs in celery salt and paprika and takes the pot off the heat. “Are you ready for tonight?”

“Oh, I couldn’t be readier,” Queenie says with a smile, slicing up the hard-boiled eggs and setting them in the bottoms of the wet molds. She thinks about how far they’ve come, about where they started and where they are today. They’re going to a party on Diagon Alley, a real party of witches and wizards, and no one is looking at it as remarkable. They’ve become a fixture, and Queenie couldn’t be happier.

When the aspic is just starting to set, Jacob stirs in the chopped chicken and pours it into the molds, over the eggs and the olives already laid out. “These will be great,” he says with satisfaction, setting the mixing bowl aside. _Prettier than any wizard’s treat._

Queenie leans on the counter and smiles at him. Anything Jacob makes is prettier than a wizard’s treat. “This is just the absolute cat’s pajamas, don’t you think?”

“I do,” Jacob says with a grin. “I think they even convinced Ollivander to come!” _Must be magic!_

Queenie laughs. “Got him out of the wand shop? Never thought I’d see it!”

_Great minds think alike._ “I never thought we’d see the day we were standing in our own house, getting ready to go to a party on Diagon Alley,” Jacob says. He kisses Queenie on the cheek and she hums happily. Jacob bustles off to finish make the serving plate and garnish it, while Queenie watches with a sappy little smile. Life feels perfect, just now.

Good food, good friends, and the best of all men. What more can she ask for?

 

***

 

There’s an explosion from the kitchen. Graves drops the book he’s holding and bolts to his feet, instinct taking him straight to the kitchen door. He has to stop there, though, and process what he’s seeing. Credence is on the floor and there’s a smoke stain on the ceiling, and Credence has smoke residue all over his face.

“Everything is fine!” Credence says when he sees Graves, scrambling onto his feet.

Graves puts his wand away, staring. “What did you do?”

“I was trying to brew…a potion…” Credence says, looking distinctly shifty.

Picking up a towel, Graves goes over and starts dabbing at Credence’s face. “A potion? Now I’m interested.”

“It was just practice.”

There’s something going on here, and Graves wants to get to the bottom of it. “Do tell.”

Credence continues to look shifty. “Look,” he says, “I really don’t…please don’t look at me like that…fine. Fine. I was trying to come up with something that would, um, get you slightly, er, hot and bothered, and…”

Graves can’t help laughing. “You overdid the ‘hot’ part of that while you were working?”

“It was one degree!” Credence says, glaring at the overturned cauldron. “One!”

Credence is mostly free of smoke, now, but Graves does notice that he’s lacking in one crucial attribute. That can wait until he’s calmed down a bit, though; at the moment, Credence might really explode. “Come on and sit down for a while,” Graves says, pulling Credence into the living room.

They collapse next to each other on the couch, Credence snuggling into Graves’s side immediately. “Sorry about the ceiling,” Credence says after a while.

“I’ve done worse,” Graves says with a shrug. “Ask any Wampus around about the blown-up chimney in the dormitory.”

Credence laughs. He somehow contrives to get even closer, piling himself in like he belongs there. Which he, of course, does. “I will, whenever we next meet a Wampus,” he murmurs.

“Besides,” Graves says, “you know that you don’t need magic to get me worked up, right?”

“Oh?” Credence asks, looking up at Graves with a small smile. “Prove it.”

Graves does.

They’re still snuggled on the couch, afterwards, Graves having summoned a blanket because it is a little cold, this time of year. Credence is lazy and sleepy, and Graves feels much the same way. But there is one piece of information that Credence does need to know.

“There’s one thing that you probably do need to fix,” Graves says.

Credence stiffens slightly. “What?”

“You got hit in the face with that explosion,” Graves says. “You might…want to look in a mirror.”

There’s a pause.

“…oh no.”

“Eyebrows can grow back, you know.”

 

***

 

“Look,” Newt says, “don’t panic–”

“I’m not the one panicking!” Tina says from above him. “Now shut up, I have to figure out what to do!”

Newt looks up–down? Directions are complicated just now–at the floor of the gorge below him. His leg, tangled in the rope and the only thing holding him off from a fifty-foot fall, is beginning to ache. “You should hurry.”

“And you just had to go and lose our wands,” Tina says, somewhere back from the edge now.

“They are not lost!”

Tina sounds like she’s dragging something. “The Niffler has them hidden somewhere, that’s the same thing! And it’s not like either of us are good at wandless magic!”

“That’s not my fault.” Above is an alarming clang. Newt cranes his neck, scarf half-covering his mouth, trying to see what’s happening. “Tina, what are you doing?”

“Saving you!” she says breathlessly. “Hang on–damn–isn’t there a block and tackle in the Thestral barn?”

“Yes, but–” Half a second later there’s the sound of the suitcase opening, quick footsteps on the ladder, and then silence. Newt is left, hanging by one foot, swinging upside down in the faint breeze. At least the knot holding him up is quite solid. He won’t be falling any time soon. They’d been setting up a net in an attempt to catch a very wayward Wind Snake, but obviously that had gone awry.

More clattering and a lot of thumping accompanies Tina’s swearing as she emerges from the suitcase again. “If you ever fall off a cliff again, and if I ever get my wand back, I will hex you,” she threatens. There’s what sounds like hammering now. “Are you still okay?”

“All the blood’s gone straight to my head,” Newt says, “but I’m fine.”

“If I drop you in the next thirty seconds,” Tina says cheerfully, as there’s a rather loud creak of rope, “please know that I love you.”

“I love you too. Please don’t drop me?”

Oh so slowly, Newt begins to rise up to the clifftop again. Hauling him by hand had been a bad idea, so what had she done? He’s able to help himself as he begins to be dragged over the gravelly cliff face, and sees–

“A pulley system!”

Tina, flushed and pleased with herself, grinning like a cat, comes over once he’s safely away from the edge and helps him untangle his leg. “I was reading one of your mechanical books the other night.”

Newt studies the system. It’s crude, cobbled together from the net parts and the block and tackle, but as far as he’s concerned it’s the most beautiful construction he’s ever seen. “You,” he says decisively, “are a genius.”

“And you’re an idiot,” she says, the sting of the words softened by a kiss. “Don’t scare me like that! No more falling off cliffs.”

“Well,” Newt says, taking her hand, “if I ever do again, I at least know you’ll rescue me. With or without a wand.”

**Author's Note:**

> Also, let me note that I ALSO will have posted "the switchman", which is a short fic that takes place in a gap in "a better mirror." It's...somewhere back there.


End file.
